Daily Green Tea

Tea Mind is a resource for anyone who wants to learn more about the mindful practice of the daily consumption of tea.  What began one year ago for me as a New Years resolution to drink 7-10 cups of green tea every day has become nothing short of a way of life.

I practice Chinese Medicine at Mercy Health hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Our department is called Mercy Health Wege Institute for Mind, Body and Spirit.  For many years I had been advising my patients to incorporate green tea in their daily pursuits of more healthy life styles.  Right now there are about 22,500,000 results on Google when you search for the “health benefits of green tea.” Almost every one of these results come from research done in Asia.  Firstly, these people are drinking between 6 to 10 cups of green tea a day.  The women in the studies average 6-8 and the men 7-10 cups per day.  That’s quite a daunting number for the casual tea drinker.  Secondly, the quality of the tea that these studies utilize is vastly different from the standard type of tea we usually see in the west.

I myself had always enjoyed tea, but never to the level that research shows its efficacy.  Never having made a New Year’s resolution before, I decided that now was as good a time as ever to set my hypocrisy aside and embark on kind of a “research study” of my own.  So, on December 31st of 2014 I began drinking the prescribed amount of tea necessary for the claimed health benefits.  The journey continues to astound myself and those around me.